And we are out..

The toffee cookies are made, the cheese straws are made (thank you Harriet for your inspiration), we have pretty much packed the WHOLE house! We are heading to the beach, The Outer Banks in fact. Yes we know there is a hurricane heading right towards us, but we are hoping it is just bringing good waves and no mad weather. I think that is a pretty fair wish. I already told Worth that I am not even trying to get stuck in an evacuation with BellaRose so we (BellaRose and I) will be leaving the minute the weather turns rotten! We will talk to you folks in about a week and a half. Have a great labor day!

I will leave you with Worth's carrots. These little seeds were are Hail Mary Pass and it turned out that we had a touch down with them! How funny that me out of all people just spoke football! Ha, just shows how much you know about me, just kidding. Sorry just getting a little excited about vacation!

Have I told you

This baby loves to hang from trees. She likes to hang from anything really. She has turned 15 months old and with that she has learned the word no which really is "na". She says it all the time. I am not a big fan of this and have no idea how to stop her saying it. I think I like the jibberish much better. We went to the doctor yesterday for her check-up, she was 19lbs 8 oz. She is still a little bean. People think that it is so strange when they see her walking b/c she is so little but then I tell them how old she is and it is no longer so strange. She loves to walk with her hands behind her back and talk to herself. She loves being chased and playing hide and seek. She has a slight obsession with shoes which is to be expected, have you seen my closet? She will bring Worth and me our shoes, and they are usually the matching pair. I think it means she is a genius. She loves to sit in things, laps, chairs, car seats that are on the floor, cars, anything. I think it makes her feel like a big girl. You should see her back up when she is about to sit. I feel like we need the moving truck back up beep when she is doing that, beeep....beeep, it takes her so long to back up! She loves warm towels just out of the dryer, but really who doesn't? She knows where her feet are and she likes to tickle them herself even though she does not laugh near as hard as when we do it to her. She continues to be the light of our life. She brings us joy all the time even when she is throwing her 1st extended temper tantrum (that was yesterday, not sure what to do about that either). We love this little baby, all 15 months and 19pounds of her!

We are getting rain. I can't tell you the last time we had a full day of rain. It is almost strange to hear the rain hitting the roof and to wake up to that sweet sound. It feels refreshing and renewing. I doubt this rain will end any droughts or bring any water tables up a significant amount, but for today it brings us much joy!

Fresh Local Goodness

...all from our garden. There are many reasons why I love living in a small town, but one of the main reasons is that we know the local shopkeepers. It is nice to know that when we walk into town from the house that we can wave to people that own the stores and they know us. There is just something so comforting about that. One of our favorite places to eat lunch recently used our tomatoes in their amazing tomato pie. We sort of felt famous for a few minutes! Here is the billboard from this past Saturday. You have to read the fine print.

Summer is....

Eating cherry tomatoes just off the vine



Walking through mud with your new Tevas on



Eating homemade Kool-Aid Popsicles on the front stoop with Dad


Having an over abundance of pumpkins in August and a tomato with stretch mark issues (do you think it just had a baby too?) that Worth has declared the best tasting tomato this year!
















These pumpkins get me excited for my favorite time of year, fall. I don't want to wish summer away by any means. The end of summer is always sad, it means getting back to the grind of work even though I have been out of school for years. The public school kids are already back at school, my heart breaks for them a little bit. The pools are all closing down for the summer even though hot days are far from gone. I looked outside the other day and saw leaves changing. Worth and Ben told me it is just because the trees are dying from lack of rain, I choose to believe different and just think it is the on set of fall. Whatever your feelings are about the change of seasons I hope you embrace these final days of summer, I know we will.

On the go

We have been on the go for the past couple of weeks, Atlanta, Concord, birthday parties....etc, etc. We are sticking around these mountains for the next couple of weeks until our final summer vacation to the Outer Banks. We can hardly wait! We were in Concord last week for a couple of days hanging with Worth's family. Worth and Ben wanted to go to the Whitewater Center while we were there, so we left BellaRose with T-love and Big Poppa and loaded the kayaks on the roof of the car and headed for Charlotte. This place is really cool, it is basically a man-made river that has 2 loops and a conveyor belt that takes you back to the beginning. It was disgustingly hot outside, the kind of heat where you just pour sweat even when you are just sitting there, but I did still manage to have fun taking pictures of the brothers and their river adventure. The whitewater center is also very interesting for its night life as well. We were sitting there having some beverages eating some food and people of an "older" age started coming in all dressed up ready to meet people. If you are interested in doing come people watching this is the place to do it, you have your people there all dirty from being in the river and riding bikes and then the Charlotte nightlife people. I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it!

Product Endorsement of the week is The FURminator. This dog brush is INSANE! We have the full range of dog hair over here at the Grant Household. Atticus, the husky, has the thickest fur and is forever shedding his 8 layers of fur. Rainy, the lab, has the short fur who is also forever shedding and this brush works on both of them! I am telling you, if you have a dog and it sheds you have to get this brush. You can find it on amazon way cheaper then in the pet store, although we bought ours in the pet store. You can even borrow ours to test it out!

Pet Peeve of the week is computers! First of all our computer is the slowest thing on earth it might as well be a dinosaur. We are debating on what kind of computer to get next. I want a Mac, Worth is up in the air but sees that Macs cost way more. I would love to hear what you have to say. I hear a refurbished Mac is the way to go. So onto the real pet peeve, I like this blog and I LOVE designing it most of all. I want my pictures to be straight and somewhat follow a format. I want you to know what you are going to get here, and for me that means organized pretty pictures. Well I was on my in laws computer and they have a much larger screen then we have here at home, well my pictures looked all spaced out and not at all pretty like I want. Now how frustrating is that for all us OCD people and our blogs! I hear that is why Jen won't ever blog, a big A-HEM here as she needs to just go ahead and blog already!

Okay so that is my rant for today, go and buy a FURminator and tell me about computers, that is your homework.

Family Ties and flour

Grandma is 94. Grandma is an amazing woman, A-MAZ-ING! She is BellaRose's great grandma and of course her namesake. We are all bound to her. Family ties and history are a pretty incredible thing, one little curve in the road and we would not be, one chance encounter with another person and there could not have been a me, or a BellaRose even. My grandma is rich with history, my history. I love hearing her stories of when she was young. I have a feeling that she was a bit mischievous and never wanted to miss out on a party. Even for her 94th birthday she gets so excited and just glows while her family dotes on her. I love this woman, my Grandma!

This picture to the right is of BellaRose trying to put on my dress. This baby loves things around her neck, any kind of loop hole and it is around her neck. You gotta watch her!

My dad and Taylor singing opera to BellaRose "BeeeelllllaaaaRrrrooosssaaaa". Grandma loving on her birthday cake(I made it and we will talk about all the ways it was so NOT pretty later). Grandma and her boys!

We all love a BellaRose story right? Today's story begins and ends with Self Rise flour. I am back here on the computer checking the 70 emails I had waiting for me from my trip home and Worth is with my sweet girl in the kitchen, we both think that she is being unusually quite and lo and behold she was. I come into the kitchen and she has flour all around her, all over her hands and face. It was about the cutest thing ever, way cuter then her eating dog poop (tell you that one later too). I guess she wants me to make No-knead bread soon.

Once again don't forget to look at the produce section of our blog, we have CORN!!! We ate our first ear of silver queen corn right off the stalk, raw and full of goodness. I can't wait to eat more.